Page 39 of Death at Fournier Downs
“She was with child,” Audrey deduced, her astonishment plain. Hugh had felt the same connecting strike ringing through him.
Shows of emotion were not the way of the ton, but the marchioness’s tears could not be hindered. Lord Finborough had scowled at Hugh as if he held the officer responsible while Audrey gently asked if Bainbury had known of his wife’s condition.
“He wouldn’t listen to us, practically gave us the cut direct,” the marquess said.
“Suicide carries a taint,” Hugh had said. “Perhaps he wanted to distance himself from it as quickly and thoroughly as possible.”
“The earl did not care. Mary’s death would be gossip for as long as the mourning period lasted, but he knew there would be other young misses waiting to land an earl,” Lady Finborough had replied. Hugh saw her reasoning—as shameful as suicide was, a man’s title could withstand just about anything.
The carriage ride to Kilton House had lasted just over an hour, and Hugh began to wonder if the return would be undertaken in complete silence. It would not be such a bad thing; he needed time to think about the possible connecting threads the questions around Mary’s death now introduced. He could see Audrey’s mind was at work as well.
“They were both with child when they died,” she whispered at last. The carriage rocked along the road, the stifling heat working up a sweat under his clothes. He loosened his cravat despite the impropriety and Basil’s certain chastisement.
“Who would not want those babies born?” she asked.
“Bainbury told me he didn’t need more children, considering he already has his heir and spares,” he replied. “But another child would not have posed any threat to him or his heir. He had no motive to not want them born.”
“And even if they were not his, he would claim them,” Audrey agreed.
“Certainly. It is the honorable practice.”
For a true gentleman, declaring that a child born to their wife was not theirs by blood was a dishonorable act. The same could be said about lords and their by-blows, although the rules of morality there were a little more muddled. While most gentleman would not formally recognize a child sired outside the bond of marriage, it was the honorable thing to care for them monetarily. What had made Lord Neatham so much the eccentric was the act of bringing his by-blow into his own home, raising him alongside his legitimate children, and allowing his short-lived mistress to remain as nanny. And when Hugh’s mother had no longer been needed as nanny, she’d been given a tidy set of rooms attached to the carriage house and an annual living.
To say that Viscountess Neatham had been bitter about such an arrangement would be an understatement. Though to Hugh, the viscountess and her opinions had little mattered. She’d barely been involved with her own children, and she and the viscount had been all but strangers.
“Perhaps Bainbury grew enraged when he learned Charlotte had a lover. Mary might have had one as well.” Audrey didn’t put any true feeling into the speculation, and Hugh thought that illustrated the problem perfectly.
“No, he would not have cared, not if the earl’s disinterest in Mary matched the disinterest he displayed when speaking of Charlotte,” he replied. “Passion is what drives a man to kill his wife. Anger. Hatred. Love. They are all there together on the edge of a very thin sword.”
He met her eyes and found they were peering at him with scrutiny. “You have come across many cases like that in your time at Bow Street?”
“Unfortunately.”
When a woman was killed, nine times out of ten, the killer was her husband or father or brother. And more than half of those cases were the result of a man losing his temper, taking things too far. He would be brought into custody a blubbering mess of anguish and regret.
“Do you enjoy your job, Mr. Marsden?”
The question took him by surprise. He shifted on the brocade cushion. “I don’t think I enjoy it as much as I value it.”
“Value?”
It would be difficult to put into words without exposing too much of himself. However, Hugh had nothing to be ashamed of.
“You are aware of my history, and the rather complicated position I hold in society. I am lucky Sir Gabriel took me on as a Runner after the debacle with the current Viscount Neatham.”
“You refer to the duel,” she said.
Hugh didn’t like speaking of the duel. Invariably, it always led to the question of why his half-brother, Bartholomew, challenged him to pistols at dawn in the first place. And that was not something Hugh discussed, ever.
“I do,” he said, then swiftly continued, “Sir Gabriel gave me a chance to remake myself, and that is something I am thankful for.”
A slow grin spread across her lips, and Hugh wondered if he’d said something amusing.
“If I had been born a man, I think I would have liked to have been a Runner. From what I have seen, it is an exciting job.”
Hugh was grateful she had not pressed for more information on Neatham and the duel. She had to be curious; the woman was insufferably inquisitive. Her restraint impressed him.
“If you had been born a man, you would now be Lord Edgerton, and I’m afraid the Runners’ ranks are alarmingly low on barons.”
